Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management
and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management
National Report of the Kingdom of the Netherlands for the Sixth Review Meeting
The Hague, October 2017
Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment
Section A Introduction
Purpose of the national Joint Convention report
On 10 March 1999, the Netherlands signed the Joint Convention on the Safety
of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management
(hereafter: Joint Convention or JC), which was subsequently formally ratified
on 26 April 2000 and entered into force on 18 June 2001. The Joint Convention
obliges each contracting party to apply widely recognized principles and
tools in order to achieve and maintain high standards of safety during
management of spent fuel and radioactive waste. It also requires each
Contracting Party to report on the national implementation of these
principles to meetings of the parties to this Convention. This report is the
sixth in its series. It describes how the Netherlands meets the obligations
of each of the articles established by the Joint Convention.
The information provided by the present report applies to the situation of
August 1st 2017 unless explicitly specified otherwise.
Structure of the national report
The national report for the Joint Convention follows closely the structure
as suggested in INFCIRC/604/Rev.4, “Guidelines regarding the form and
structure of national reports”. Where appropriate, more detailed information
is provided in the Annexes. This updated report has been designed to be a
‘stand alone’ document to facilitate peer review. Consequently, in this
national report the different articles from the Joint Convention are
addressed as follows:
Section A – Introduction
Section B – Article 32.1, policies and practices
Section C – Article 3, scope of application
Section D – Article 32.2, inventories and lists
Section E – Articles 18 - 20, legislative and regulatory system
Section F – Articles 21 – 26, other general safety provisions
Section G – Articles 4 – 10, safety of spent fuel management
Section H – Articles 11 – 17, safety of radioactive waste management
Section I – Article 27, transboundary movement
Section J – Article 28, disused sealed sources
Section K – General efforts to improve safety
Section L – Annexes
Relationship between this national report and other national reports1
 In the European Union, Council Directive 2011/70/Euratom (hereafter:
the Directive) establishes a community framework for the safe management
of spent fuel and radioactive wastes. Article 11 of the Directive obliges
EU Member States to publish a ‘national programme for the management of
spent fuel and radioactive waste’ (hereafter: national programme) which
describes in detail the policy regarding the management of spent fuel and
radioactive waste now and in the future. The Netherlands published its
national programme in 2016.